X Games legend Travis Pastrana back in his comfort zone for Subaru

Pastrana learned from his failures in NASCAR

By
Steven Cole Smith

Jun 23, 2015

Subaru Rally Team USA

In the Vermont SportsCar Team Subaru motorhome at the X Games at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, Travis Pastrana apologizes for his two daughters, Addy, almost 2, and Bristol, born in February.

Bristol squeals, Addy runs to Daddy, then back to her mom, Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins Pastrana, a skateboarder with three gold medals from the X Games.

“This is who I am now,” Pastrana says. “Family man.”

But he is still Travis Pastrana, extreme athlete and global sensation, who won his first of eight X Games gold medals in 1999 in Moto X Freestyle. No one has taken the X Games stardom and expanded it so far and wide as Pastrana has. And today he’s back, racing his familiar No. 199 Subaru in the X Games Rally Car Race.

This is the only Red Bull Global Rallycross race Pastrana has agreed to this season, but there is always a car available on the Subaru Rally Team USA, alongside Bucky Lasek and Norwegian star Sverre Isachsen.

Here is Pastrana at the X Games in Austin, Texas.

Subaru Rally Team USA

Pastrana, 31, was just 16 when he struck X Games gold. His day job now is tending to his traveling Nitro Circus stunt show, which resumed its 75-show season June 14 in Budapest, Hungary, before traveling to Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France and Spain in the following two weeks. It started in 2003 with Pastrana producing stunt videos in a garage in Utah, expanded to an MTV television series in 2009 and then into movies.

He was supposed to make his NASCAR debut in 2011, but he broke his ankle at the X Games, so it was delayed to 2012. NASCAR was giddy: Pastrana would bring a whole new set of eyes to the sport—millions of them, and far younger than the typical NASCAR fan. NASCAR needs characters, and Pastrana is a character.

After dabbling in NASCAR in 2012, Pastrana was back for the full Nationwide season in 2013, with Roush Fenway Racing. But he was still Pastrana: At the 2013 Media Tour, the other Roush drivers arrived in identical black business suits. Pastrana wore a checkered brown sports coat, a pink shirt, a brown cardigan, brown pants and neon running shoes. Jack Roush seemed amused. A little.

Pastrana struggled in his brief NASCAR career for Roush Fenway Racing in 2012 and 2013.

LAT Photographic

Pastrana told Autoweek then: “When I called Jack, he asked if I was serious. He was very upfront. He said, ‘If you’re planning on doing this for only a year or two years, you can hang up now because I don’t want to talk with you,’” Pastrana said. “I’m not going into the season realistically expecting to win every race, but I’m going into it trying to get better each race.”

He tried hard. For a team that had won two championships with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in 2011 and 2012, Pastrana managed just four top-10 finishes out of 2013’s 33-race season, while teammate Trevor Bayne had 21. Before the last race of the season, Pastrana announced on Facebook that he wouldn’t be back. “I hate to quit and I hate to fail,” Pastrana posted.

“I’ve never been able to figure out the finesse required in pavement racing, and that is disappointing.”

What went wrong? “I’ve realized I’m a lot better on dirt. In rally, you never get a perfect lap. You’re always sideways, adjusting. In NASCAR, when everyone is running the exact same line, it just doesn’t suit my style.

“With all due respect, those cars are the biggest piles of junk you’ll ever drive in your life. And that’s what makes them so great. All-wheel drive on dirt, I can get it completely backwards and save it. I get a little sideways in a NASCAR at 180 on a mile-and-a-half track, and I’m done. I struggled there. I struggled. Still, I had a blast.”

Minutes later, Pastrana went out and raced in his heat, crashed in the blinding dust and was done for the day.

Bummer. But an hour later, Pastrana was grinning again.

“A party everywhere he goes,” Lasek said.

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